Protests over water shortages in central Iran escalated over the weekend after demonstrators set fire to a key water transfer station in Isfahan province, disrupting the supply line that channels water to hundreds of thousands of Iranians in the province of Yazd.
Footage received by Iran International shows smoke rising from the pumping station early Saturday, following a rally by farmers demanding access to Zayandeh Rud water — a long-promised resource they say has been diverted elsewhere.
“There’s been no release of water into the river despite repeated promises,” said one farmer at the protest, adding that local agriculture has been devastated by years of inaction.
Farmers in Isfahan have repeatedly accused the government of diverting their water to other provinces, particularly Yazd, while their own access to Zayandeh Rud — once the lifeblood of regional farming — remains restricted. The issue has sparked protests for years, often met with a heavy security response.
The disruption has triggered a major water emergency in Yazd, which is now facing what officials describe as red-level shortages for the population of well over half a million.
Mohammad-Javad Mahjoubi, head of Yazd’s regional water authority, said the pipeline was completely shut off after the attack and warned there was no estimate for when it might resume.
Jalal Alamdari, the managing director of Yazd’s water utility, described the situation as critical and confirmed that 13 mobile tankers had been deployed across the province.
Isfahan is considered one of the most critically affected provinces in Iran in terms of water scarcity, and the people of this region have repeatedly gathered and protested against the inefficient management of the Islamic Republic in addressing the issue.
In some cases, the protests have been met with repression by Iran's security forces. The first major act of sabotage on the pipeline occurred in 2012, tensions only intensifying since.
Interior Minister Eskandar Momeni acknowledged the broader crisis last week, calling water scarcity a “serious national issue” and urging citizens to cut back on usage.
The case centers on Cryptoland, a digital exchange shut down after the May 2021 arrest of its CEO, Sina Estavi.
At the time of his arrest, Estavi had no formal accusers, but once the news spread thousands of investors lodged complaints. Mizan news website, controlled by Iran's notorious Judiciary department, later reported over 51,000 plaintiffs.
The BRG token, which Estavi had developed, collapsed in value following his arrest. Blockchain records show that just a day after his detention, six billion BRG tokens were moved from his crypto wallet. This was before the general public was aware of a potential scandal.
These were then sold off by IRGC officers, generating tens of millions of dollars for the interrogators themselves.
A court-appointed expert identified two of the key figures: Mehdi Hajipour and Mehdi Badi, both senior interrogators in the IRGC’s economic branch. The expert’s report confirms that wallets controlled by Hajipour sold over $21 million in BRG tokens.
In March 2022, IRGC counterintelligence agents arrested Hajipour in a sting operation. He was caught accepting a $10,000 payment from Estavi, who had been led to believe he was buying back the stolen tokens from a third party — a fake identity Hajipour had created.
Court documents show that before the token theft, Hajipour’s assets were worth about 10 billion rials ($40,000 at the time). Four months later, his fortune had surged to 600 billion rials — spent on real estate, gold, and luxury vehicles. He was later held in Ward 66, a prison used for detained IRGC personnel.
The court document also reveals that Hajipour had a network of senior interrogators from the IRGC Intelligence Organization working alongside him.
The second suspect in this case is Mehdi Badi, a senior interrogator who operated under the alias Dr. Ebadi, whose name has appeared in many major cases labeled as IRGC economic corruption investigations.
He is the nephew of Ali Akbar Hosseini Mehrab, the former Deputy for Economic Anti-Corruption Affairs at the IRGC intelligence organization, who also served for a time as the Director General of Intelligence in Khuzestan and was later appointed as the governor of Khuzestan under the President Ebrahim Raisi administration.
According to the court document, two other interrogators from the IRGC intelligence organization, Majid Jahan Parto and Majid Tabatabaei, are also members of the corruption network, along with four others who assisted the group by forging documents.
There is no available information about the fate of the defendants in this case or the sentences they received, except that Hajipour’s appeal was rejected in September 2022.
However, Sina Estavi was sentenced to 15 years in prison and ordered to return the embezzled funds. He fled the country under pressure from the senior interrogators—who had in fact stolen the victims' money themselves.
Three months after Hajipour’s arrest, Hossein Taeb was dismissed from his position as head of the IRGC intelligence organization and replaced by Mohammad Kazemi.
Half of the victims in this case—whose money amounted to $14 million—were repaid from Estavi’s account while he was in prison, but around 25,000 others are still owed money. They are creditors of funds that were obtained and never returned by Hajipour, Badi, and the other members of the network.